Gitano Beach — Restaurant in Tulum

Overall, this is a great beach club to hang out, relax and spend the day. It’s located a little away from the central section of Tulum Beach, but I actually consider that a plus, because the area around the beach club is much quieter and surrounded by more wild, natural beauty. I also loved the beach and ocean area here - the sand was pure and soft, with no rocks or stones in the water, which you usually find all over Tulum, especially in the upper beach area. This beach club is open to all visitors, and there is a minimum spend requirement per person for food and drinks. If I remember correctly, it was $50 USD per person. But if you stay there for the whole day, you’ll most likely end up spending that amount anyway, since the prices on the menu are quite high. For me personally, it only took two drinks (two virgin Pina Coladas), one appetizer, and one main dish to go over the minimum; my final bill was around $65 USD. To be honest, the food wasn’t super delicious; just good. The quality didn’t really match the prices. The beach club has a large indoor restaurant area, as well as an outdoor area with many sunbeds and tables beside them. You can eat wherever you prefer. The service was just okay. My waiter wasn’t particularly friendly, he just did his job. And at times, he disappeared, so I had to place my orders through other random waiters. Also, being in the first row by the beach, it was hard to get the staff’s attention, since most of them were usually hanging out near the indoor restaurant area and didn’t walk down to the beach very often. The beach club provides towels, so no need to bring your own. Their Wi-Fi worked well, even in the front beach area, though the connection was stronger inside the restaurant. The day I visited, there was a live DJ playing pleasant chilled beach music at just the right volume - enough to set the mood,but not disturb the relaxing vibe. I had a sunbed in the first row, and I loved being there. My sunbed was very soft and comfortable. They offer individual-sized sunbeds as well as larger ones that fit 2-3 people. If I remember correctly, the larger sunbeds come with a higher minimum spend per person. There’s free parking, which is a nice bonus. And the parking staff were super sweet and friendly to me. To sum up: I can absolutely recommend visiting this beach club even just once, especially if you’re looking for a more peaceful area of Tulum Beach, where you can be closer to nature and enjoy a fully sandy beach with no rocks. Just keep in mind that the food isn’t amazing, so if you’re a gourmand and want your beach day to include top-notch meals, this might not be the ideal...

Had one of the worst experiences here ever.

Made a reservation online for beach beds for 4 people, but when I arrived, they admitted that they had overbooked the beds and no longer had room there, but that my group and I could instead book one of the beach “lounges” which is essentially the seats with tables on the sand, far from the water, close yo the restaurant, for over 7000 pesos, not including tip.

I refused and told them it was pretty unacceptable to pretty much bait and switch people considering the fact that there aren’t many other beach clubs around that won’t have you stuck in traffic for 35 minutes. They ended up seating us at a table in the restaurant, but said we needed to pay 1500 pesos per person towards credit to eat, not including a mandatory 1000 pesos tip. Given that they had just screwed up our reservation and didn’t seem apologetic about it, I refused to pay the tip upfront to their outdoor booth, and would settle that directly with our server. We had to pay upfront, and they nearly refused to give me a receipt until I told them they were required to. They only let me take a photo of that first receipt at the outdoor booth. It felt incredibly suspicious, but I let it go, and they sat us down. Once inside, it was a complete mess. Our first server took our drink orders and some appetizer orders, and minutes later, was seen sobbing and was told to leave (either fired or sent home). I was pretty sad for him given that he seemed distraught, and then we were given a second server, with whom we tried to figure out if the first one had put in the food orders.

The food took a really long time to get to us. We ate up until we had reached our credit limit, but then asked for a receipt and were told we couldn’t get one because we didn’t owe them anything, but then minutes later we were brought a receipt that now showed that we owed them money, but then the receipt showed items we hadn’t ordered, let alone eaten. We had to also argue against that bill, which at that point, felt exhausting and felt like we had to fight just to be there.

The management is suspicious and the way they handle their reservations is even moreso, especially considering the fact that they don’t even list prices online. I was really looking forward to being there, but after how they acted, I definitely won’t be going back and won’t be recommending it to anyone I know. It’s unconscionable to screw with people’s reservations, refuse to give receipts several times, and try to in essence extort people into paying for more...

Saw this place in the morning and fell in love with the vibes, the soulfulness and the beauty of this beautiful treasure gem.

Came back SOLO for dinner at 6:30pm. Bear in mind that when you are charging in US, $12 for a sparkling, $25 for cocktails, $22 and up for appetizers $65 and uo for main corse, you are at the top end of dinning experience! This is normal in this part of Tulum.

PROS Absolutely one of the most beautiful and soulful restaurant that I have experienced. Fresh flowers everywhere. The food was exquisite and tasty. I had the coconut/shrimp ceviche, Lobster on top of a fried Tortilla and the catch of the day. The abundance of candle lights, the beautiful décor, very romantic, the color of the fabric, the view to the sea, the lights that shine out on the sands, the semi open kitchen, the warm welcome from the hostesses and the attention to the soulfulness of the place was a delightful experience. The tune/music that they play was great! very chill vibes

CONS 18 minutes to get my first cocktail despite no one guest in the dinning room. I got served my sparkling immediately. I had to ask for my next drinks and finally, I gave up ordering my 2nd glass of Pinot Grigio for my fish because I was beyond half done and was getting full. Server wears tee shirt and short. Some of them was serving without shoes. The attention to details and service was lacking perhaps it was too quiet of a night. Music was club like - loud and ready to parTI! Despite it was hard to have a casual conversation unless one shouted. As I said, great tunes. The most I saw was 7 tables for the time that I was there, one suggestion is to be sensitive to the number if guests vis-a-vis to the volume of the music. Also, if you knew you were not busy, perhaps seating couple side by side looking out the beautiful view instead of facing each other may be ideal. They did do that when the couple request it. As I said the food was exquisitely tasty except for: The coconut ceviche, was supposed to be a young tender coconut flesh instead, too old to eat the hard flesh. The Lobster looks like it was from a can and tasted more like crab meat despite the server swearing up and down it was fresh.

All in all, I rated this a 3/5 based on the pros/cons of my...